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A question that always come to our mind before travelling is how much foreign currency should we buy. Mee and I both think that we won’t be coming back to Australia in the near future. Hence, it’s best if we could spend it all and we decided to not buy too much Australian dollars. We were a bit wrong as we spent almost half of our money during our time in Perth. The living expenses in Australia is quite high though Australians seem to earn a lot compared to other countries.

Take for example, Mee and I bought a SIM card just for the sake of convenience. The hotels that we booked in Sydney and Gold Coast do not provide free WiFi and we kind of need the internet while we are there. Anyway, the SIM card costs from AUD2 to AUD5 and a minimum recharge from AUD19 depending on the service providers. And every recharge has an expiry date. I thought expiry date was history. My friend in Perth told me that it costs them AUD60 for internet connection only with a 50GB allowance per month. Every meal costs at least AUD10 and the cheapest meal you can get is fast food like McDonald.

I guess Mee and I will have to eat a lot of cup noodles while we are in Sydney and Gold Coast.

Haha… My previous blog post wasn’t really relevant to its title. Well, at the time of typing that blog post, Mee and I were actually at Perth’s airport, waiting to fly to Melbourne. Nevertheless, we are in Melbourne now. Unfortunately, I am not feeling too well since yesterday. I am at Mee’s friend’s home now while both of them went to Melbourne city. I am actually a lot better now and I do hope that I will be fully recovered today. We were supposed to go to Werribee open range zoo today but I was too tired. I guess the tireness was also because we went on a Great Ocean Road tour yesterday. It was a full day tour from 0800 to 1930. There were a lot of stops and we had to get on and off the bus very frequently. Also, the weather was really hot but we felt cold when the wind blew. Hot and cold don’t work well for me I suppose.

Mee’s friend suggested that I go and see a doctor this morning but then again, we will probably be send to buy medicine from pharmacy instead which Mee and I had already done yesterday. If I don’t get better, I might have to visit the hospital! The idea of seeing the wards and hospital carts doesn’t sound very good at all!

By the way, Mee and I paid about AUD87.50 per person online for the Great Ocean Road tour. However, when I looked at the company brochure, it will cost AUD160 per person to book at the visitor centre. That’s almost 50 percent more than what we paid.

It’s been a great few days in Perth. Yesterday, our friend dropped us off in Perth’s Chinatown after picking up her daughter. We then went around Chinatown on our own before heading towards Perth city. In Chinatown, we ate lunch twice; once at a Hong Kong BBQ restaurant and once at Penang House Restaurant. Mee was quite disappointed when she found out that the Penang House Restaurant no longer sell assam laksa. After lunch, we walked to Perth city with is just south of Chinatown. In fact, Perth’s Chinatown is not on the map, it’s just happened to have a lot of chinese shops around the area.

At Perth city, we took the advantage of the free CAT buses to take us around. There are three CAT buses lines which covered most of the tourist areas, if not all. Honestly, Perth city is quite small. On a good day, it should take just half a day to cover all the tourist areas. We were a bit unlucky as it rained intermittently throughout the day.

Our final stop was the Perth mint. It’s a place where they process golds and silvers into gold bars,personalized coins and the likes. We didn’t join the tour as we thought it would be quite similar to the one that we went to in Amsterdam.

Eight more days and Mee and I will be doing our first out of nine flights. We haven’t started packing and I haven’t finished planning the trip stuffs. It all sounds a bit hectic and the worst part is that I feel unusually tired since last night. My muscles are still aching since Sunday’s gym session. I guess I won’t be doing any gym-related things tonight and just take Mee to the gym for her AquaFit session.

By the way, I wonder if I will be needing an umbrella in Australia as all my umbrellas are broken. Might have to make do with just Mee’s umbrella. Mine had broken for quite some time already but I haven’t got the chance to look for a new one mainly because it hasn’t been raining. It’s just one of those things where you don’t think about it until you really need it. Anyway, if only consumer’s umbrellas can be as strong as like the market umbrellas at PatioUmbrellas.com. Those types of umbrella could easily withstand strong winds and bad weather. Mee’s umbrella is quite strong too considering that I have two broken ones and her umbrella is still perfectly fine.

I still can’t get around with the idea of hotels not offering free WiFi access. Well, I appreciate that in some parts of the world, internet is not cheap but I would have thought that internet should be widely available in a country like Australia. But no, 80-90% of hotels in Australia incur a charge of at least $12 for 24 hours access. It would be a lot higher if you go for per hour rate. It may seem that a charge from 50 cents per hour (should you go for the 24 hours access) is not too expensive but when you look at the hotels’ rooms prices, the charge is unnecessary. I suppose Mee and I will be going to McDonald as it’s our best bet to get free internet access.

Time flies … I always like to use those two words. In fact, I almost forgot about this blog. I only thought about it when I was taking shower last night. I feel bad. Anyway, I didn’t update this blog that frequently because a lot of things happened and I am very busy with my work. The shocking news, though not really shocking, is that my manager has since resigned. He will leave the company early March and no one knows what will happen then. A lot of staffs have been put at the ‘at risk’ category. I am still fine because we are actually short staffed. No one can actually do my work at the moment, hence, I am still safe. That goes the same with my other colleagues in my department. Well, we are in the same department but the works that we do are totally different.

I have changed my daily habit quite a bit minus the late sleeping part. I am still trying to coach myself to sleep early but it’s always until midnight where I start to get all energetic. I have started to take shower before having dinner. The vacuuming routine has changed from Sunday to Monday instead. Mee and I have started attending gym classes during weekend; Body Balance on Saturday and Zumba on Sunday. Well, Zumba is only for Mee as I am not interested. I will just be in the gym area doing free weights stuff. We used to also go to the gym on Tuesday as Mee attended aqua fit class. However, the pool has closed since before Christmas and will only be opened next week. Hence, we have been staying at home all this while on every Tuesday.

Right now, Mee and I can’t wait until our booked holiday period. The last time we went abroad was almost four months ago and it seems like forever. This time, we are quite ambitious as we will be going to Australia and possibly New Zealand. Mee has a couple of friends living in Australia and we could save quite a bit in the accommodation side of things. In addition, my uncle and his family lives in New Zealand, hence, we will most probably be going there and stay at his house for a few days while sight seeing.

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